Police discovered 150 skulls at a “crime scene” in Mexico. It turns out the victims, mostly ladies, had been ritually decapitated over 1,000 years in the past.

When Mexican police discovered a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they had been a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital.

It seems it was a really chilly case.

It took a decade of exams and evaluation to find out the skulls had been from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History stated Wednesday.

"Believing they had been taking a look at a crime scene, investigators collected the bones and began examining them in Tuxtla Gutierrez," the state capital, the institute, often called INAH, stated in a press release.

The police in 2012 weren't being silly; the border area across the city of Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has lengthy been suffering from violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic cranium piles in Mexico normally show a hole bashed by all sides of every cranium, and were usually found in ceremonial plazas, not caves.

However experts said Wednesday the victims within the cave had most likely been ritually decapitated and the skulls placed on show on a type of trophy rack known as a "tzompantli." Spanish conquistadores wrote about seeing such racks in the 1520s, and a few Spaniards' heads even wound up on them.

While often strung on picket poles utilizing holes bashed through them - the frequent follow among the Aztecs and other cultures - experts say the cave skulls may have rested atop poles, relatively than being strung on them.

Interestingly, there were more females than males among the many victims, and none of them had any enamel.

In light of the cave experience, archaeologist Javier Montes de Paz stated people should most likely call archaeologists, not police.

"When folks discover something that could be in an archaeological context, don't touch it and notify native authorities or instantly the INAH," he said.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered the main trophy rack of sacrificed human skulls at Mexico City's Templo Mayor Aztec ruin site.

That same year, artifacts discovered on the Zultepec-Tecoaque spoil website revealed proof from when a whole bunch of people in a Spanish-led convoy were captured, sacrificed and apparently eaten.

A 2016 research discovered that in societies the place social hierarchies have been taking form, ritual human sacrifices focused poor people, helping the highly effective control the decrease lessons and keep them of their place.

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